p. 335 | SLAVERY IN AFRICA

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 22, 1880

SLAVERY IN AFRICA.

A WRITER who has recently visited the western coast of Africa on the United States steamer Ticonderoga, makes the following statements respecting negro slavery:—

"The idea that slavery in Africa disappeared with the abolition of the foreign slave trade, an idea which seems to be prevalent both in Europe and America, is nevertheless a mistaken one. Slavery not only exists, but its evils are very much aggravated by the fact that for the want of a foreign market the supply is in excess of the demand. The value of the slave has depreciated until the preservation of his life and health has become a matter of no consequence to his owner. The increase and growing export trade of Africa is the product of slave labor. The slave, not so well fed or cared for, is raising ground-nuts in some distant part of his country, as far away from his home and kin as though he were cultivating sugar on a Cuban plantation. It is safe to say that money and sympathy expended on the negro slave has in nowise emeliorated his condition. On the contrary, the trade which was made contraband and abolished at sea has added to its cruelties the thousand times greater evils of transportation overland through jungles and marshes, where hundreds perish by the wayside from famine and exposure.

"I have just visited the Gallinas, a river on the coast of Liberia, a point where, in the palmy days of 'the trade,' Dom Pedro Blanco held his rude court and annually shipped to Cuba thousands of his sable brethren. A negro, likely, young, and robust, can be bought here to-day for £4, taken in trade goods at that! I venture to assert that 1,000 slaves a month could and would be delivered at that rate to any buyer in the market. Perhaps the most indifferent man to this state of things is the negro himself. It is his normal condition; if he runs away he is only captured by another master."